"Tapering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there can be no objection, because there can be no danger of abuse, and they are a convenience both to merchants and individuals. I think they should even be encouraged, by allowing them a larger than legal, interest on short discounts, and tapering thence, in proportion as the term of discount is lengthened, down to legal interest on those of a year or more. Even banks of deposite, where cash should be lodged, and a paper acknowledgment taken out as its representative, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... joyously cried the fiery-eyed veteran. "I had despaired of ever setting eyes again on thy black curls!" Van den Ende's own hair tossed under his wide-brimmed tapering hat as wildly as ever, though it was now as white as his ruff, his blood seemed to beat as boisterously, and a few minutes' conversation sufficed to show Spinoza that the old pedagogue's soul was even more unchanged than his ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... faces were carved colossal figures of Osiris, as at Luxor, Medmet Abou, and Karnak (Fig. 15). The columns, which were seldom over six diameters in height, were treated with greater variety; the shafts, slightly tapering upward, were either round or clustered in section, and usually contracted at the base. The capitals with which they were crowned were usually of one of the five chief types described below. Besides round and clustered shafts, the Middle Empire and a few of the earlier monuments ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... the full-page illustration (Fig. 14), and see how the bevel protractor is utilized to measure the angles of work, whether it is tapering heads or different kinds of nuts, or end and side surfacing, and it will teach an ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... signalling flags, long pointed strips of bunting with red balls or blue on them. The central streamer just tipped as it fluttered the top of the iron cross which marked the religious nature of the gateway. The straight gravel walk inside was covered with red baize, and on each side of it were planted tapering poles, round which crimson and white muslin circled in alternate stripes, giving them the appearance of huge old-fashioned sugar-sticks. These added to the gaiety of the scene, though it cannot be supposed that they were of any actual use. The most bewildered visitor was hardly likely to stray ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... face—a most impressive face. If you could fancy some mighty serpent transformed into a man, preserving in the human lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness of frontal—the tapering elegance of contour disguising the strength of the deadly jaw—the long, large, terrible eye, glittering and green as the emerald—and withal a certain ruthless calm, as if from the consciousness ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... harbour with its motley collection of craft vanished; he heard the sharp, hoarse cries of command on the Golden Cloud, and saw the bridge slowly opening to give egress to the tug which had her in tow. He saw her shapely hull and tapering spars glide slowly down the river, while Poppy Tyrell, leaning against the side, took her last look at London. He came back with a sigh to reality: the Swallow had dwindled to microscopical proportions, and looked ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... alley vaulted with thick ilex and myrtle formed a tapering vista where the shadows lay misty blue and pale shafts of light pierced through fitfully. At the far end it ran out into an open space and a splash of sunshine. A marble Ganymede with lifted arms rose in the middle like a white flame. The girls were ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... July 8th, the cells contained nearly full-grown larvae, with some half developed. They were feeding on the masses of pollen, which were as large as a thick kidney bean, and occupied nearly half the cell. The larvae (Fig. 21) resemble those of the Humble bee, but are slenderer, tapering more rapidly towards each ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... polished ebony, whispering to itself, lapping with small stealthy gurgles angles of masonry and ancient piles. On the farther bank tall warehouses reared square old-time heads, their uncompromising, rugged profile relieved here and there by tapering mastheads. A few, scattering, feeble lights were visible. Nothing moved save the ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... scarcely a ripple behind her, so fine and clean was her run. Very different was this smooth, gliding motion from the quick plunge and shock of the bluff-bowed fishing boat to which he was accustomed. The sails had been scrubbed until there was not a speck upon them. The masts were lofty and tapering, the rigging neat and trim, and every stay as taut ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... upon this picture, and on this": first, the gay little senorita, holding daintily in her tapering fingers a cigarette, which she occasionally raises to her "ripe red lips", afterwards languidly following with her lustrous black eyes the blue wreaths of smoke as they float above her head and vanish in the air; next, ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... tight-lacing was an effete superstition clean gone forever. But again and again, last summer, I saw this wretched disease, this cacoethes pectus vinciendi, breaking out with renewed and increasing virulence; and I heard women—yes, grown-up women, old women—talking about the "Grecian bend," and the tapering line of the slender, willowy waist. Now, girls, when you have laced yourselves into a wand, do not be so infatuated as to suppose that any sensible man looks at you and thinks of willows. Not in the least. Probably he is wondering how you manage to breathe. As for the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... mighty vessel, huge of beam and length, her superstructure towering proudly aloft, her massive armoured sides sweeping up in noble curves, a Super-Dreadnought complete from trucks to keelson. Yacht-like she sat the water all buoyant grace from lofty prow to tapering counter, and to me there was something sublime in the grim and latent power, the strength and beauty ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... thick growth just outside the forest edge, and looking sharply from side to side, soon pitched upon a couple of long, thin, tapering canes, which he hacked off and trimmed neatly, so that they formed a pair of very decent fishing-rods, and he looked ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... bring the black curls down over his face; his laughter was ringing and hearty, and merriment found added expression in the doubling up of his body and the shaking of his hand. His hands were small, with sensitive, tapering fingers, and when playing the fingers acted as if endowed with separate life and intelligence. There was no effeminacy connected with his lovable nature; he was quick to resent meanness or deceit, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... myself abruptly on my elbow and saw before me the shadowy figure of a woman. At once I recognised Clarimonde. She carried in her hand a small lamp of the shape of those which are placed in tombs, and the light of it gave to her tapering fingers a rosy transparency which, with gradually fainter tints, prolonged itself till it was lost in the milky whiteness of her naked arm. The only garment she had on was the linen shroud which covered her on her death-bed, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... he saw. From her gleaming neck down to the ground was dank, shapeless form. So a walrus or huge seal might appear, could it totter about erect upon low, fin-like feet. There was no grace of shape, no tapering tail, no shiny scales, only an appearance of horrid quivering on the skin, that here and there ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... iron shirt-bosoms, should be made, one foot and a half long, and nine inches wide, and covered with white flannel. A skirt-board on which to iron frock-skirts, should be made, five feet long, and two feet wide at one end, tapering to one foot and three inches wide, at the other end. This should be covered with flannel; and will save much trouble, in ironing nice dresses. The large end may be put on the table, and the other, on the back of a chair. Both these boards should ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... into one of the stalls, and fed him with fodder and corn in the ear, and came and leaned on the fence behind her. She was now crouched down beside the cow; he could see her brown, tapering arms and wrists against the cow's flank, and hear the milk as it ran into her tin pail with a sharp, intermittent sound. Above the back of the cow, of which she seemed a part in the thickening darkness, loomed up her cottage. There was a yellow ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... seal; its frame being of the same description, though differently moulded. It was considerably more bulky in proportion to its length, its chest and back more elevated, its fore flippers thicker and more rounded, and its hind quarters less tapering to the tail. Altogether, it impressed upon the mind a strong idea of a formidable monster, in spite of its relatively diminutive head; for its fearful tusks, and thick-set projecting whiskers, gave its visage a most truculent expression; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... the grass had caught the far-seeing eye of an enemy, whose dark shadow was now seen moving over the ground. On looking up, the boys beheld a large bird wheeling in the air. Its snow-white head and breast, the far spread, tapering wings, but, above all, the long forked tail, told them at a glance what bird it was. It was the great ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... foramen opens onto the lateral surface of the maxilla. The opening is the entrance to a canal that runs posteriorly above the tooth-row throughout the length of each specimen. Beneath the naris the maxilla extends as a broad tapering shelf, the ventral surface of which articulates with the premaxilla. The narial rim is wide, but wider ventrally than dorsally. The plane of the narial rim is oblique to the lateral surface of the maxilla. The external surface ...
— Two New Pelycosaurs from the Lower Permian of Oklahoma • Richard C. Fox
... raft, which in consequence floated with so much additional power to sustain those who depended on it for life. The Skimmer, accompanied by his two silent but obedient seamen, ventured along the attenuated and submerged spars to the extremity of the tapering masts, and after toiling, with the dexterity of men accustomed to deal with the complicated machinery of a ship in the darkest nights, they succeeded in releasing the two smaller masts with their respective ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... when a broad, pearl-gray sky was powdering the motionless air with misty snow, the sisters sat together at their sewing in what had been known, since his accident, as Bressant's room. There was no stove; but a rustling, tapering fire was living its ardent, yellow, wavering life upon the brick hearth, and four or five logs of birch and elm were reddening and crackling into embers beneath its intangible intensity. It made a grateful contrast to the soft, cold bank of snow that lay, light and round, upon ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... wondrous beauty; more and more the vapours rose, until a great soft barrier seemed erected before us, almost as high as the trees; dense at their roots, tapering away to indistinctness at their tops, where the sunset glow lay warm and bright upon their ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... then threw back one veil, and then another, until she discovered a face even more beautiful than that of the portrait I had just replaced on the wall. I must also mention that she seemed conscious of her charms, for with an air of much grace and dignity, she raised her jeweled fingers, so tapering, and smoothed the glossy black hair over her polished brow, while the diamonds of her bracelets sparkled through the white ruffles ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... of locust wood, 5 feet long, one-half an inch thick, and 1-1/2 inches wide in the middle, tapering at the ends to 1 inch. The back of the bow is undressed, the bark simply having been removed. The string, which resembles ordinary twine, is said to be made of wild hemp. The arrows are 40 inches in length. The shafts are made of hickory wood and have conical points. Stone and metal points are ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... Baltimore friends vaunted not its capabilities in vain. I cannot remember having seen elsewhere so promising a "ducking-point." Imagine a low, marshy peninsula, verging landward into stunted woods, full of irregular water-courses and stagnant pools—tapering off seaward into a mere spit of sand, on which reeds and bent-grass scarcely deign to grow, towards the extreme point, just where the neck is narrowest, are the "blinds"—ten or twelve in number—a ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... stalk, of medium height; large leaves; flowers freely; bears no fruit. The tuber is quite smooth, nearly cylindrical, varying to flattish at the centre, tapering gradually toward each end. Eyes shallow, but sharp and strongly marked. Skin thin, tough, of a dull bluish color. Flesh white, solid, and brittle; rarely hollow; boils through quickly; is very mealy, and of the best table quality. It is as healthy and productive as the Early Goodrich, ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... bone scraped and rubbed to a gradually tapering point, to the thick, knobby end of which a string of human hair, plaited, was cemented, the other end of a length of several yards being similarly cemented to the interior of a hollow bone, also human. When the stiletto-shaped bone is directed towards an ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... far as I could ascertain it, was revealed by his mouth and chin, and by a certain nervousness of his hands, hands where a square, practical palm was belied by the slight tapering of his fingers, the mark of the dreamer. His mouth was unquestionably sensuous, with the lips full and now and then revealing out of the studied practiced calm of his face an almost imperceptible twitching, as ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... wooden hulls and tapering masts the forests of New England were the envy of every European monarch ambitious to develop a navy. It was a time, too, of greater naval activity than the world had ever seen—though but trivial ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... northern part of the town are many religious temples, with their tall towers like slender pyramids, tapering to a point. They are curious things, and surprisingly well preserved. The interiors of these temples are uninteresting. Nofuhl says the religious rites of the Mehrikans were devoid of character. There were many religious beliefs, all complicated and insignificant variations ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... the woods. He expected that a renewal of the attack would be necessary before the sacrifice of the yellow locks could be accomplished, and he stood on the steps of the hotel, clad in the most exquisite of grays, tapering down to the most brilliant of boots. He had a white rose in his buttonhole, and his great black dog was lying at his feet, having for a wonder found his master, for the beast was given to roaming, or to the plebeian society of Barker's servant. The American's careful attire contrasted ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... the thimble on her second finger. Her fingers were small, white, and tapering. The thimble exactly fitted the narrow tip on which ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... woman to the very tips of her long, tapering fingers, and finding herself in a position of power was not going to capitulate at once. It was delightful to be coaxed, and by the boys, too. So she merely sat up and, gazing back up the lane, sighed in a hopeless way and said, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... five pieces, which, when fitted together, form a wooden tube about 8 ft. long (93 in.) with a conical bore tapering from a diameter of 1-3/4 in., at the bell, to 3/16 in. at the reed. The tube is doubled back upon itself, the shorter joint extending to about two-thirds of the length of the longer, whereby the height of the instrument is reduced to about 4 ft. The holes are brought ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... over each other—'imbricated,' as the botanists would say, in that fashion, which gives its peculiar solidity and richness of light and shade to the foliage of an old sycamore; and among these noble shoots and noble leaves, pendent everywhere, long tapering spires of green grapes. This shore-grape, which the West Indians esteem as we might a bramble, we found to be, without exception, the most beautiful broad-leafed plant which we had ever seen. Then we admired the Frangipani, {15b} a tall and almost leafless shrub ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... abhorrence. The bulky figure of the Regent who, under the influence of copious port wine libations and general good living, had grown preposterously fat, is admirably preserved by both the Cruikshanks. The head and wig, tapering to an apex, remind one somewhat of the French poire caricatures which disturbed the serenity of Louis Philippe, and preceded the revolutionary period ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... mammae, which, without being too large, occupy the bosom, rise from it with various curves on every side, and all terminate in their apices, leaving the inferior part in each precisely as pendent as gravity demands; the flexile waist gently tapering little farther than the middle of the trunk; the lower portion of it beginning gradually to swell out higher even than the umbilicus; the gradual expansion of the haunches, those expressive characteristics of the female, indicating at once her fitness for the office ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... themselves, are still unfigured and undescribed, and some of which could scarce have belonged to any coniferous tree. In one of these (Fig. 138), the ligneous bracts or scales, narrow and long, and gradually tapering till they assume nearly the awl-shaped form, cluster out thick from the base and middle portions of the cone, and, like the involucral appendages of the hazel-nut, or the sepals of the yet unfolded rose-bud, sweep gracefully upwards to the top, where they present at their margins minute ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... jarred brain. How incredibly blind he had been! What an idiot of sorts! Why, the marks of sex sat on her beyond any possibility of doubt. Every line of the slim, lissom figure, every curve of the soft, undulating body, the sweep of rounded arm, of tapering waist-line, of well-turned ankle, contributed evidence of what it were folly to ask further proof. How could he have ever seen those lovely, soft-lashed eyes and the delicate little hands without conviction coming home to him? And how could ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... looking behind him occasionally, as he pulled the boat, to observe the beautiful proportions, and the comely, tapering spars of the yacht. Beside the Penobscot, even the ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... is the redwood tree! And the redwood is more beautiful even than the stone-pine of Italy. Gray lavender in color, hard as though cut from stone, swelling at the base to an incredible bulk, shooting straight to an incredible height and tapering exquisitely as it soars, it drops not foliage but plumage. To walk in a redwood forest at night and to look up at the stars tangled in the tree-tops, to watch the moonlight sift through the masses of soft black-green feathers, down, down, until strained ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... shop-windows are decorated. Behind the panes of clear glass the gilt of presentation-books rises like a glittering wave under the gaslight, the stuffs of various and tempting colours display their brittle and heavy folds, while the young ladies behind the counter, with their hair dressed tapering to a point and with a ribbon beneath their collar, tie up the article, little finger in the air, or fill bags of moire into which the sweets fall ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... the landward side of the marshes. I caught sight of my future home looking very small and desolate against the long stretch of sea-wall, and far in the distance I could just discern the mast of the Betty still tapering up above the bank of the creek. It was comforting to know that so far at all events Mr. Gow had neither ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... workroom with the foreman, John automatically, and without knowing what he was doing, picked up a square piece of the bark, and fashioned it with two or three deft cuts of his penknife into a smooth tapering cork. His companion picked it out of his hand and examined it with the eye of an expert. "This is not the first cork which you have cut by many a hundred, Mr. Hardy," he remarked. "Indeed you are wrong," John answered, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... very simple in form, there are a few other slight variations in detail which assist in distinguishing them. The rods are sometimes very blunt at the ends, almost as if cut square across, while in other species they are more rounded and occasionally slightly tapering. Sometimes they are surrounded by a thin layer of some gelatinous substance, which forms what is called a capsule (Fig. 10). This capsule may connect them and serve as a cement, to prevent the separate elements of a chain from ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... be set in position. The result was that externally the tower resembled the trunk of an oak tree, and appeared to be just about as strong. It offered the minimum of resistance to the waves, which, tumbling upon the ledge, rose and curled around the tapering form ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... limbs, were not obscured by her absolutely plain gown of soft, light-brown linen. She was tall, but not too commanding, and, as her hand was raised to fasten back a wisp of hair, there was the motion of as small a wrist and as tapering a bare arm as ever made prisoner ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... about us, and they said that many of these were starting or finishing journeys of hundreds of leagues in the air. Then I cried out as I saw a great shape coming nearer us in the air. It was many rods in length, tapering to a point at both ends, a vast ship sailing in the air! There were great cabins on its lower part and in them we glimpsed people gazing out, coming and going inside, dancing even! They told me that vast ships of the air like this sailed to ...
— The Man Who Saw the Future • Edmond Hamilton
... prominent cheekbones and a short, square jaw. Unlike the others, he was armed, with a knife and pistol on his belt, and on the breast of his black tunic he wore a scarlet oval patch on which a pair of black wings, with a tapering silver object ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... airmen, and which is extremely deadly when hurled against dense masses of men, is the steel arrow, or "flechette" as it is called. It is a fiendish projectile consisting in reality of a pencil of solid polished steel, 4 3/4 inches in length. The lower end has a sharp tapering point, 5/8ths of an inch in length. For a distance of 1 1/8th of an inch above this point the cylindrical form of the pencil is preserved, but for the succeeding three inches to the upper end, the pencil is provided with four equally spaced angle flanges or vanes. This flanging of the upper end ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... spiritually, and good for their field artillery evolutions, to be watched by maidenly and matronly eyes. Quite as good was it, too, for their occasional heavy-gun practice with two or three huge, new-cast, big-breeched "hell-hounds," as Charlie and others called them, whose tapering black snouts lay out on the parapet's superior slope, fondled by the soft Gulf winds that came up the river, and snuffing them for ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... figures came looming, ghostly-fashion, out of chaos, to take slow shape and form, to resolve themselves into tapering lodges, into ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... together, and among them but one single sailing vessel—a Liverpool barque of 1,000 tons, loading wool. She looked lost, abandoned, out of place, and my heart went out to her as my eyes travelled from her shapely lines and graceful sheer, to her lofty spars, tapering yards, and curving jibboom, the end of the latter almost touching the stern rail of an ugly bloated-looking German tramp steamer of 8,000 tons. On that very spot where I stood I, when a boy, had played at the foot of lofty trees—now covered by hideous ill-smelling wool stores—and had seen lying ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... meadow-lark. What a twang there is about this bird, and what vigor! It smacks of the soil. It is the winged embodiment of the spirit of our spring meadows. What emphasis in its "z-d-t, z-d-t," and what character in its long, piercing note! Its straight, tapering, sharp beak is typical of its voice. Its note goes like a shaft from a crossbow; it is a little too sharp and piercing when near at hand, but, heard in the proper perspective, it is eminently melodious and pleasing. It is one of the major notes of the fields ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... "eccentricity" or "throw" of an eccentric is the distance between C^2, the centre of the shaft, and C^1, the centre of the sheave. The throw must equal half of the distance which the slide-valve has to travel over the steam ports. A tapering steel wedge or key, K, sunk half in the eccentric and half in a slot in the shaft, holds the eccentric steady and prevents it slipping. Some eccentric sheaves are made in two parts, bolted together, so that they may be removed ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... the quick skill of woman, rolled down the stocking on her right leg. Modestly daring, she stretched out her foot and slightly lifted her dress. On the outer side of the tapering limb was an ugly bruise, scratched deeply ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... ever travelled in the right train and descended at the right station? How could she remember such trifles when her thoughts were fixed on such distant compelling dreams? The pale oval face, the black hair brushed back from the forehead, the thin hands with long tapering fingers, the black dress, the slender upright body—this figure against the cold bright winter sunlight was a picture that remained always from that day ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... honey-bee, and of the same general form and color, and its manner among the flowers is nearly the same. On close inspection, its color proves to be lighter, while the under side of its abdomen is of a rich bronze. The body is also flatter and less tapering, and the curve inclines upward, rather than downward. You perceive it would be the easiest thing in the world for the bee to sting an enemy perched upon its back. One variety, with a bright buff abdomen, is called "sweat-bee" ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... right hand; with this they beat on the spear, as an accompaniment to their own voices in songs, that varied both as to time and measure, especially the latter; yet their voices, and the sounds produced from the rude instruments, which differed according to the place on which the tapering spear was struck, appeared to accord very well. Having engaged us a short time in this vocal performance, the court ladies made their appearance, and were received with shouts of the greatest applause. The musicians retired a few paces, and the actresses ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... Among the first that answered to my call The hero came whose story you shall hear. 'Tis better I describe him: He was young— Near two and twenty—neither short nor tall— A slender student, and his tapering hands Had better graced a maiden than a man: Sad, thoughtful face—a wealth of raven hair Brushed back in waves from forehead prominent; A classic nose—half Roman and half Greek; Dark, lustrous eyes beneath dark, jutting brows, Wearing a shade of sorrow, yet so keen, And in the storm ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... more or less of some elongated form, such as linear, linear-lanceolate, lanceolate, etc. (See fig. 14.) In a few grasses the leaf-blade is ovate, but this is a rare condition. Therefore, in noting the general shape of the leaf-blade the relation of the length to the breadth, the amount of tapering towards the apex and base and the nature of the apex should ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... nearly a foot high, crowned by two or more large deep yellow flowers,—flowers the shape of little bonnets or hoods. One almost expected to see tiny faces looking out of them. This illusion is heightened by the horn or spur of the flower, which projects from the hood like a long tapering chin,—some masker's device. Then the cape behind,—what a smart upward curve it has, as if spurned by the fairy shoulders it was meant to cover! But perhaps the most notable thing about the flower was its fragrance,—the richest and strongest ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... through the water as hard as he could go, the pony following willingly enough, but only to snort and plunge as a swell of water rose before them where the water was very shallow, and a dark, bark-like, glistening back was seen for a moment, followed by a tapering tail, as a ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... the signal light, Speeding along through the rain and the dark, Like a ghost in its snow-white sark, The pilot of some phantom bark, Guiding the vessel, in its flight, By a path none other knows aright! Behold, at last, Each tall and tapering mast Is swung into its place; Shrouds and stays ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of bones that rest upon one another, forming more or less open angles. The bones of the column meet and form articulations that are held together by ligaments, and attached to their faces, borders and extremities are muscles and tendons. In the superior portion of the limb the muscles are heavy, tapering inferiorly, and terminating in the region of the foot in long tendons. Each limb is divided into four regions. The regions of the fore-limb are the shoulder, arm, forearm and forefoot. In the hind limb are the regions of the pelvis, haunch, thigh, leg and hind-foot. The feet ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... remaining unoccupied—those that were close to each other. Now, what could two idle hands do, when one belonged to a man deeply in love, the other to a young woman who for some time had ill-treated her lover and exhausted her severity? Before the end of the first part, the long unoccupied, tapering fingers of the treble were imprisoned by those of the bass, without the least disturbance in the musical effect—and the ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... uncontrollable fit of laughter, to the intense amazement of his questioners. While in the midst of this laugh, he became horrified by the thought that that of itself would be sufficient to betray him, so he cleverly remedied the evil, and gave vent to his feelings by tapering the laugh off into a hideous yell, and rushed frantically ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... just yet," said Nariaki, raising a long, bony, tapering hand. "There are a few formalities which our guests have ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... would seek to assure work during the coming fiscal year to the individuals now on relief, or until such time as private employment is available. In order to make adjustment to increasing private employment, work should be planned with a view to tapering it off in proportion to the speed with which the emergency workers are offered positions with ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... spoken, the commonest object becomes a thing of delight. The high-roofed house, the brazen threshold, the polished chest, the silver-studded sword, the purple robes,—the tawny oxen, the hollow ships, the tapering oars,—the wine-dark sea, the rosy-fingered dawn, the gold-throned morning,—Hector of the nodding plume, the white-armed Nausicaa,—so in long procession moves the spectacle. A like distinctness invests all the actions and emotions of the story with charm. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... are set in beds the work can be facilitated by the use of a "spotting-board" (Fig. 17). This should be about 1 foot in width, and have pegs about 3 inches long, 3/4 inch in diameter at the base and tapering to a point, fastened into the board the distance apart the plants are to be set. It should also have narrow projections carrying a single peg nailed to the top of board at each end, so that when these pegs are placed in the end holes of the last row the first row of pegs in the "spotting ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... Cheyennes is formed of seventeen poles, about three inches thick at the end which rests on the ground, slender in shape, tapering symmetrically, and eighteen feet or more in length. They are tied together at the small ends with buffalo-hide, then raised until the frame resembles a cone, over which buffalo-skins are placed, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... how their mothers were, she went and sat down in one of the front windows, and made little scollops and eyelets. I remember her long ivory stiletto, with a loop of green ribbon through the head of it, and the sharp, tiny, big-bowed scissors that lay in her lap, and the bright, tapering silver thimble on ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... steer! To right and left of him is one long tapering tine. Each of them, naked as a tusk, has a peculiar twist which suggests that it is perfectly scientific. Immediately you are impressed with ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... Even when I had become quite well and strong again, I wondered how the sailors could really like such stuff; but many of them had a jug of it, besides the Greenlander, which they brought along to sea with them, to taper off with, as they called it. But this tapering off did not last very long, for the Jamaica was all gone on the second day, and the jugs were tossed overboard. I ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... patrician face was pure as some bending lily frozen on its graceful, rounded stem: and the tapering fingers with daintily curved, polished nails would have suited better the lace and velvet of royal robes than the rough home-spun sleeves folded back ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... business or his pleasure, and everywhere making his way through the crowd, to observe, as you often may, people pushing one against another, only perhaps to see a funeral pass. The English coffins are made very economically, according to the exact form of the body; they are flat, and broad at top; tapering gradually from the middle, and drawing to a point at the feet, not very unlike the case of ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... little world of Wareham would probably at once have dubbed her a beauty. The long black braids were now disposed after a quaint fashion of her own. They were crossed behind, carried up to the front, and crossed again, the tapering ends finally brought down and hidden in the thicker part at the neck. Then a purely feminine touch was given to the hair that waved back from the face,—a touch that rescued little crests and wavelets from bondage and set them free to take a new ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... folded sheep at the bleating of her lamb. But recovering comfort quickly, without more ado, I raised her left hand and observed it with a nice regard, wondering at the small blue veins, and curves, and tapering whiteness, and the points it finished with. My wonder seemed to please her much, herself so well accustomed to it, and not fond of watching it. And then, before she could say a word, or guess what I was up to, as quick ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... very distinguished guests may be invited. The host and hostess sit opposite each other at the sides of the table, with the guests tapering off in rank to right and left of them, the ends of the tables being filled up with aides and secretaries. When a great man is invited his aide or secretary must be asked also. These come usually ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... vacuum, on account of the difficulty of holding the closing disk in place if it be of very large dimensions. The same is the case with large vases of wood form. On the contrary, an elongated piece tapering from above is more easily moulded by pressure of the air, as are also ovoid vessels 16 to 20 inches in height. In any case it must not be forgotten that the operation by vacuum should be preferred every time the form of the objects is adapted to it, because this process ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... cast anchor before the town. The ship flew English colors and was a veritable floating palace. There are few crafts afloat even at this day that equal it in elegance. It had been built by the most skilful carpenters in the world at that time, and the long, tapering masts, the deck and bows were more of the modern style than ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... covers. Its head appears bigg and blunt, and its body tapers from it towards the tail, smaller and smaller, being shap'd almost like a carret.... It has two long horns before, which are streight, and tapering towards the top, curiously ring'd or knobb'd and brisled much like the marsh weed called Horses tail.... The hinder part is terminated with three tails, in every particular resembling the two longer horns ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... pleasure. A single locust is now heard near noon from a tree two hundred feet off, as I write—a long whirring, continued, quite loud noise graded in distinct whirls, or swinging circles, increasing in strength and rapidity up to a certain point, and then a fluttering, quietly tapering fall. Each strain is continued from one to two minutes. The locust-song is very appropriate to the scene—gushes, has meaning, is masculine, is like some fine old wine, not sweet, but far ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... occupied by a six-atomed group, the atoms arranged as on the end triangles of a prism. This form recurs very often, and was noted, last month, as seen in copper (Plate VI, 3); it revolves with extreme rapidity around its longitudinal axis, and looks like a pencil sharpened at both ends, or a cigar tapering at both ends; we habitually spoke of it as "the cigar." It appears to be strongly coherent, for, as will be seen below, its six atoms remain attached to each other as meta-compounds and even when divided into ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... is a stretch of road that runs for some three miles through the French settlement, where the prairie is as level as the surface of a lake. There the fields of flax and wheat and rye are bordered by precise rows of slender, tapering Lombard poplars. It was a yellow world that Margaret Elliot saw under the wide light ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... scrutinizing it as if it had been a bit of precious porcelain or ivory. It was small and soft, a mere featherweight, a puff-ball of a hand—not quick and thrilling, not a speaking hand, but one to be fondled and dressed in rings, and to leave a rosy blur in the brain. The fingers were short and tapering, dimpled at the base, with nails as smooth as rose-leaves. Ralph lifted them one by one, like a child playing with piano-keys, but they were inelastic and did not spring back far—only far enough to ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... at first incurved, creamy white with egg yellow stains, darker on the center, in age somewhat darker to umber or fuliginous, moist when fresh, surface soon dry, flesh tinged with yellow. The gills are white when young, then grayish to pale rose, and finally light purple brown, rounded in front, tapering behind (next the stem) and rounded, free from the stem, 4—5 mm. broad. Basidia clavate, 25—30 x 5—6 mu. Spores small, oval, 3—4 x 2—3 mu, in mass light purple brown. The stem tapers above, is sub-bulbous below, yellowish and stained with darker yellowish threads below the annulus, ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... mountains, till they are no longer able to support their own weight; and then large pieces break off, which we call ice-islands. Such as have a flat even surface, must be of the ice formed in the bays, and before the flat vallies; the others, which have a tapering unequal surface, must be formed on, or under, the side of a coast composed of pointed rocks and precipices, or some such uneven surface. For we cannot suppose that snow alone, as it falls, can form, on a plain surface, such as the sea, such ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... These fenders standing on claw feet were afterwards fitted with bottom plates of iron, on which was a ridge or rest against which the fire brasses were prevented from slipping. Then came iron or steel scroll-shaped fenders, tapering down from a few inches in height at the ends to centres almost level with the ground. To obviate the inconvenience of there being no resting-place for the fireirons loose supports were fitted into sockets ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... water that could be seen between the posts of the felza was rippling with little steely waves. The line of the heavy beak cut the opening between the tapering point of the Lido and the misty outline of Tre Porti. Inside the white lighthouse tower a burnished man- of-war lay at anchor, a sluggish mass like a marble wharf placed squarely in the water. From the lee came a slight swell of a harbor-boat puffing its devious course to ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... History, has not, like the common Argus of Borneo, excessively elongated secondaries; and its tail is not formed of normal rectrices, from the middle of which spring two very long feathers, a little curved and arranged like a roof; but it consists of twelve wide plane feathers, regularly tapering, and ornamented with ocellated spots, arranged along the shaft. Its head is not bare, but is adorned behind with a tuft of thread-like feathers; and, finally, its system of coloration and the proportions of the different parts of its body are not the same as in the common argus of Borneo. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... asked, and for an answer he pointed with his arm to where against the sky were outlined the tapering masts of a large vessel lying ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... American Ritualistic Spire! How can the modern American Ritualistic Spire be here! The well-known tapering brown Spire, like a closed umbrella on end? How can that be here? There is no rusty rim of a shocking bad hat between the eye and that Spire in the real prospect. What is the rusty rim that now intervenes, and confuses the vision of at least one eye? It must be an intoxicated ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... where it was possible to spring across by a series of boulders, arranged accidentally like stepping-stones; and in a minute she was standing on the main crag itself, a huge beetling mass of detached serpentine pushed boldly out as the advance-guard of the land into the assailing waves, and tapering at its ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... son of the Squire of Brackendene, was not going to wield a twelve-foot fly-rod, tapering and lissom, and suitable for sending a delicate line floating through the air to drop its lure lightly on the surface of the water. Such practices would have been utterly impossible on any part of the woodland rivulet. But, all the same, he knew perfectly ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... great water-snake began to swim slowly round our ship in decreasing circles. Its length could not have been less than 200 feet, while its girth, in the middle, was almost that of a fair-sized whale, tapering towards the head and tail. Lashing the sea around it into foam, the serpent drew closer until it looked as though it would crush the ship in its folds. Hartog, the only man amongst us who preserved his presence of mind, ordered our guns to be loaded and ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes |
